The pace of innovation and the number of marketing resources available today is nothing short of astounding, and few other advertising platforms are performing as consistently as those in the digital space.
With today’s marketers striving to do more with less, there is an increasing need to be able to connect with customers in a highly targeted way that’s not only measurable, but delivers a healthy return on investment.
But out of all the digital communication strategies on offer, email marketing continues to outperform every time. Let’s look at how and why it’s now a critical part of the way you do business.
Email Marketing Guarantees Substantial Reach
Social media marketing in general is a tremendously powerful way to reach your audience, and over 15 million Australians are active on the world’s number one social media platform. But although Facebook is a pivotal part of many users’ online activity, usage can be fleeting with people consistently moving from one platform to another depending on what’s popular at the time. Most users don’t spend all their time on one single platform, instead they access a range of sites including YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Snapchat and Twitter.
Importantly, behind every online account we use (including things like online banking and shopping), an email address is required in order to register. Hence, people frequently check their emails for important notifications regardless of whether it’s on a laptop, tablet or smartphone.
In fact, 72.9% of 18-24 year olds use their phones to check email. And when a prospect or customer who opens an email on a mobile device opens that same email again on another device, they are 65% more likely to click-through to your site/offering!
Email access also tends to be consistent and long lasting with many users maintaining the same address for long periods of time, which often far outlasts their usage of any given service.
Statistics also show that email usage around the world continues to grow at a steady pace. In 2015, the number of email users was around 2.6 billion, with the figure expected to rise to around 2.9 billion in 2019. In fact, over a third of the population uses an email address and the average user owns more than one.
Adopting an email marketing strategy can provide a method of communication that prompts instant action, and it can also be tailored to your target customer’s behavioural patterns to both retain and expand your audience base, which can lead to increased click-through and conversions.
Email is the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders.
Email Marketing Delivers Your Message.
When compared to other digital marketing platforms, email marketing is a guaranteed way of directly communicating with your customers. Up to 90% of emails are delivered to the intended customer’s inbox, compared to only 2% of Facebook likers seeing your posts in their News Feeds.
Average click-through rates from an email campaign are also higher, around 3%, whereas the rate from a tweet is only around 0.5%. That’s often because email subscribers have approved your request to be communicated to (due to the strict regulations around spam), so if you’re sending email marketing to a customer, it’s because they want to receive it. Hence, they’re not only more likely to read it, but actively respond with a click-through, which can turn potential customers into paying customers.
At Soak Creative we deliver online marketing campaigns for our clients across many email marketing platforms,
including Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, and Vision6.
Email Marketing Offers A Healthy ROI
Everyone wants the best bang for their buck when it comes to marketing a brand or product, however interacting with your customers on major advertising platforms like TV, radio, outdoor or direct mail (in the old fashion sense) can be expensive.
In a world where news travels fast and convenience is critical, email marketing offers businesses the most efficient way of connecting with customers quickly and cost-effectively. In fact, many online marketing experts believe that for every dollar spent on email marketing, the return on investment can be up to $38 per transaction, resulting in email marketing topping the ranks for ROI across a variety of digital platforms.
Digital marketing as part of a holistic email marketing campaign is also fairly easy to set up – you simply pick a platform, set up a branded template, access your email database and then start communicating with your customers instantly. Digital campaigns are also easily managed and can be automated to tie in with other marketing strategies like your website blog, meaning you can send weekly updates to customers without having to lift a finger.
All of these benefits point to greater customer engagement, and when you’re able to communicate with your customers in a manner that’s both appealing and accessible, increased sales and ROI will follow.
Email Marketing Is Customisable and Highly Measurable
One of greatest benefits of adopting an email marketing strategy is the ability to tailor and optimise campaigns for individual customers. Leveraging your customer data enables you to personalise your communication with them, and segmentation by interests or purchasing behaviour ensures they are receiving the content they actually want to read.
Another way you can optimise an email marketing campaign is to run A/B split tests – where you run two versions of the same campaign with minor variations like in the subject line. This is delivered to a small group of your customer base to find out which works best, and then based on the results, you send that version to the rest. The techniques of personalisation and A/B split tests can also be merged to create an even more astute campaign, which results in a communication strategy that’s not just targeted, but effective.
Due to the instantaneous nature of email marketing and therefore customer response, feedback on your performance indicators is also pretty much instantaneous. Here at Soak Creative, our email marketing services allow us to constantly monitor your updates in order to maximise your marketing’s performance. Valuable real-time metrics we can source include opens, clicks, forwards, bounces and social shares, just to name a few. This allows us to pinpoint trends including what are the best days and times to deliver email communication, evaluate which campaigns were more successful than others and why, and then use these findings to utilise the best assets of each in the future.
Email Is An Open Platform That Will Be Around Forever
Over the past few years, businesses have invested a huge amount of time and money into building large social media followings. However, algorithm-controlled feeds have often meant that platforms like Facebook (and soon Twitter) have reduced the amount of followers who will see a brand’s posts unless it’s a paid ad. That means up to 98% of a brand’s followers may never even see posts in their News Feeds.
These channels are controlled and owned by third parties, and therefore marketers are at the mercy of changes these platforms instigate. Email, on the other hand, isn’t controlled by any particular entity – it’s a consistently growing, open platform and the diverse array of businesses who use email marketing ensures no one party can make changes that will have a widespread effect.
Embrace the email!
Looking to undertake some email marketing in Brisbane? Soak Creative have united the best professional minds in Brisbane under one full service banner – digital, brand, creative, development, design, strategy and online marketing. Contact us today!
